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I missed much of the newsgroup discussion of this topic, but your summary
of the responses was very useful. Thanks.
I suppose I should introduce myself before going much further. My name is
Jim Chen, and I teach (among other things) agricultural law at the
University of Minnesota Law School. Strange as it seems to me (at times),
I have no formal affiliation with the land grant portion of the
University. Rather, I devote a very substantial amount of my research
agenda and a full fourth to a third of my teaching time to agriculture.
This fall, at the annual American Agricultural Law Association conference
in Memphis, I will be moderating a panel on biotechnology development and
use in agriculture. Likely the discussion will focus on recent
controversies over rbST, the crop exemption to the Plant Variety Protection
Act, and "supertomato" (Calgene's transgenic FlavrSavr). Like you, I have
a keen interest in the descriptive and the normative implications of public
support for biotechnological research. So keen is my interest, in fact,
that I open chapter 4 of my forthcoming text, Agricultural Public Law, with
a discussion of the Morrill Land-Grant College Act and the legal & economic
issues attending public subsidization of the entire land grant complex.
The rbST controversy is particularly interesting to me (as a nonbeliever in
traditional agrarianism) because it exposes the fundamental tension between
the Jeffersonian-now Wes Jackson farm ethic and technological advancement
on the farm. Truth is, every technological advance since the plow and the
sickle has resulted in some displacement of human labor. During periods
of economic expansion -- whether actual or merely expected -- this process
has been lauded as deliverance from drudgery. When the displacement is
more extreme, or the alternative uses of displaced farm labor seem
relatively unattractive, or both, a great howl rises from the populist
corner of the farm community. So today's rbST battle cry is, "We have
plenty of milk already; boycott Monsanto." Trouble is, though, that the
extreme inelasticity of demand for farm commodities, the income
inelasticity of demand for the same (as opposed to income elasticity
of demand for restaurant and time-saving processed foods for home
consumption), and the competitive structure of the farm sector fuel what
Willard Cochrane called the "agricultural treadmill" four decades ago: you
adapt to a new technology because you must, but it doesn't get you ahead
of where you were. No wonder traditional dairy farmers, especially among
the 50-cow herds prevalent throughout the M-W milkshed, hate rbST.
To my jaded (sub)urban eyes, however, this technological development is
cause for celebration, not despair. Instead of casting the problem as
one of too much milk, you might as well say that there are too many
producers and too many cows in production. There never was and never
should be an entitlement, whether formalized in law or merely implicit in
our customary assumptions about law and policy, to farm as a way of life.
Sadly, perhaps, and definitely contrary to the sweet, romantic vision that
we often have of agriculture, farming is a continually declining sector in
a progressing economy. Every degree granted by a land grant college
accelerates the human exodus; every research breakthrough at an experiment
station revs the technology-driven agricultural treadmill. The implicit
rbST tax that concerns me, truth be told, is the 25 to 30 cent premium
on every gallon of fluid milk sold under the aegis of the new state laws
facilitating voluntary labeling (or, perhaps, requiring mandatory
labeling). My heart goes out not to the well-heeled consumers who can
think they're buying "mastitis-free," "hormone-free" Milk Classic, but to
the relatively uninformed consumer who is asked to cough up an extra
quarter as an ignorance tax.
So much for these musings, which are probably grossly out of line with the
prevailing views on a sustainable agriculture newsgroup. But I welcome
engaging in discourse of this sort with you or anyone else who has an
interest in these broad, structural issues in agriculture.
Cheers,
Jim Chen
University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
voice: (612) 625-4839
fax: (612) 625-2011